I Was Billed For Every Minute Of Their Love novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: The Counter-Invoice
Two hundred people stood to applaud my father, and he let them go on for nine seconds.
I counted, because I was sitting at the head table in a green dress Bev had hemmed that afternoon, with Eli's hand folded around mine under the cloth.
My mother sat across from us in pale blue, her pearls tight at her throat.
She didn't look at either of us.
"Thirty years," my father said at the lectern. "Thirty years of time well spent."
The crowd laughed on cue.
He talked about efficiency, and clients, and the pavilion that carried his name down the hall from this very room.
Then he took off his glasses, which he did when he wanted the room to feel it.
"My family," he said, "has taught me that the most valuable thing a man can give is his hours. I've given mine to this firm. I've given some, a few, to my daughter."
Soft, warm laughter.
"And I've seen to it that she has had good company. Dr. Kearney, who sits beside her tonight, was the first. A man who loved my daughter on schedule."
The laughter stopped halfway.
Eli didn't move.
His hand tightened on mine, once, and then eased.
Two tables over, I heard a woman say, what did he say, and a man tell her to be quiet.
"Our guest of honor," my father said, smoothly. "Elizabeth."
I stood.
My legs were steady, which I hadn't expected.
I walked up the three steps to the lectern, and my father stepped aside with a hand held out.
The display in the oak read 4:00 in green.
It began to count the moment I put my hand on the wood.
3:59.
"Good evening," I said. "I brought a statement."
The microphone made me sound taller than I was.
"A few weeks ago my father read me a bill at my engagement dinner. Nine hundred ninety-six hours of parental time, at one hundred fifty dollars an hour. He tore it in half and called it a gift."
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